A CONFLICT OF VISIONS
Ideological Origins of Political Struggles
Thomas Sowell
New York: William Morrow, 1987
273 pp., $15.95
Thomas Sowell, who is a scholar-in-residence at the Hoover Institution, is well known for his voluminous writings on the economics of race. Sowell is a conservative thinker who has opposed, on economic, sociological, and philosophical grounds, many of the positions taken by left-liberals on affirmative action. His writings are distinguished by their intellectual acuity and their dispassionate reasonableness.
In A Conflict of Visions Sowell turns back to what he regards as his true métier, one he has pursued for thirty years - the history of ideas. Here he investigates what he sees as two contrasting visions - the constrained and the unconstrained - from which arise ideological positions. He argues that ideas tend to fall into constellations or visions of how the world works and what is appropriate in such worlds. He contends that the visions, which concern knowledge, reason, and social processes, apply to concepts of equality, power and justice. Generally they fall under the rubric of "constrained" or "unconstrained." But hybrid forms may evolve - Marxism, for instance - and they may change over time.
If this book is viewed as an essay on the history of ideas, then it succeeds admirably in presenting to the intelligent lay reader two imagers of the nature of the world that have influenced legal, economic, social, and political opinions through the ages.
But if one believes, as I do, and as most of Sowell's comments suggest, that he was also trying to show the superiority of the constrained vision, then the work is flawed. Moreover, from the standpoint of intellectual analysis, it ignores another image that I believe has motivated thinkers in the past and that has more merit than either of the images it discusses.
According to Sowell, the constrained vision accepts the view that human nature cannot be changed substantially, that all institutions involve trade-offs, and that by way of tradition and the historical process, institutions evolve which are superior to those that can be constructed on the basis of abstract reasoning. The unconstrained vision, on the other hand, sees mankind as perfectible, is impatient with trade-offs, and has confidence in the use of reason as the source of human institutions. Whereas the unconstrained vision appeals to standards of justice - and here, Sowell says, the ideology of the French Revolution is paradigmatic - the constrained vision prefers the trade-offs of functioning societies. Sowell is aware that few thinkers accept either vision in pristine form. But he regards the contrasting images as highly diagnostic of possible choices that individuals will make. He says the choices tend to fall into bundles, being ideologically consistent.
If one were to think of these two visions as initial approximations of attitudes establishing a basic continuum on which choices would necessarily occur, perhaps a case could be made for leaving out third alternatives. But I believe that there is a fairly consistent image that stakes out a different position, albeit still on the continuum.
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